Don't get me wrong, I'm completely in favor of space exploration and to me, this is money well-invested. But the costs quoted are sort of all over the map.

I belive the article puts the cost at $671M, or 2/3 of a billion. This sounded a bit steep for even a Hollywood movie. So I checked Wikipedia, and supposedly the most expensive Hollywood movie was Spiderman 3, at $258M. Quite a bit cheaper. As to comparisons with military hardware, for a single platform and a single unmanned mission, we're in the same ballpark, actually.

I love the quote about the cost being about the same as a feature movie about going to mars. it really hits home about how small these things are in comparrison. They didn't go there, but sometimes we get comparrisons to military and the speed at which our military can burn through 67mil is ... well, the blink of an eye.

In conjunction with unveiling of EE Times’ Silicon 60 list, journalist & Silicon 60 researcher Peter Clarke hosts a conversation on startups in the electronics industry. One of Silicon Valley's great contributions to the world has been the demonstration of how the application of entrepreneurship and venture capital to electronics and semiconductor hardware can create wealth with developments in semiconductors, displays, design automation, MEMS and across the breadth of hardware developments. But in recent years concerns have been raised that traditional venture capital has turned its back on hardware-related startups in favor of software and Internet applications and services. Panelists from incubators join Peter Clarke in debate.